Features & News

The future of Metal Gear Solid unveiled

August 30, 2012, Author: Ray Willmott

While celebrating 25 years of Metal Gear last night, Hideo Kojima shocked the world and made three important announcements regarding the future of the franchise.

Kojima told the world that the Metal Gear movie IS still coming. Columbia Pictures will be bringing Solid Snake to the screen and Avi Arad, who has worked on Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, will be producing it.

Secondly, a Unity-powered smartphone game based on the Metal Gear universe is in development. Handled by the team at Gree, Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops was briefly showcased during the presentation.

However, the biggest announcement of the night came in the form of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes; the latest major title in the series that will be powered by the brand new FOX engine.

The first major difference between Ground Zeroes and the rest of the series is that this time, Metal Gear is going open world! What that means in terms of missions and gameplay is anyone’s guess, still this is, unquestionably, a radical and exciting departure. Dynamic weather effects were also teased.

As one would expect, cut-scenes will feature predominantly in the game, but unlike previous instalments, will blend into the gameplay and take place in real-time.

The demo featured Snake crawling to avoid searchlights and then performing a quick stealth kill on an unsuspecting guard. Snake then hopped into a jeep and called in a helicopter to evacuate him.

Kojima said that this is a ‘game without game over’. This apparently means that if a player is discovered, the game will not automatically end, but rather give the player a chance to escape and get themselves back into cover.

The footage is under embargo and that’s why screenshots and video are extremely difficult to come by. What we can tell you is, based on the comments from people at the event, the words ‘wow’ and ‘fucking awesome’ popped up more than once. Pictures and further details will pop up over the next few weeks.

Impressively, the new FOX engine can run on current-gen systems, meaning it’s no guarantee we’ll have to wait until next-gen to get our hands on Ground-Zeroes. However, the engine is scaleable and is also being designed with next-gen, high-end PCs and cloud-based systems in mind.

One thing is for sure; if you thought the first 25 years of Metal Gear were big, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

UPDATE: Here’s the first leaked photo of the game. It’s subtle but will surely ignite a ton of speculation.

Snake? SNAAAAAKKKEEE

(Source: Hideo Kojima, Konami, Kotaku)